EU disburses 47m Euros to Rwanda

Finance Minister, John Rwangombwa, and Germanyâ€™s KfW Country Director, Dr Daniela Beckmann, sign a financial support agreement last year (MINECOFIN photo)

The European Union on Friday released 47million Euros (US$60m) of its Rwanda aid program â€“ amid conflicting reports that the bloc had suspended funding, the Finance ministry announced.

â€œToday EU disbursed 47mn â‚¬ to our bank account as general budget support,â€ said Economic and Finance minister, John Rwangombwa on his Twitter page.

Early this week, a spokesman of the EU foreign office in Brussels reportedly said the EU had decided to halt talks for a new aid program for Rwanda. However, the story seemed to suggest EU aid had been suspended entirely.

On Wednesday, the EU office in Kigali clarified on what it termed as the â€œconfusion surroundingâ€ EU aid, saying that ongoing aid programs would not be affected. It added the changes, if any, is with the talks that are supposed to work out a new funding arrangement. But even with this, the Kigali Office said only â€œsome programsâ€ would be affected.

Following three contested UN reports about alleged Rwanda government involvement in DRC, several countries announced changes to their support program. But deeper analysis of the changes shows some of the withheld aid money was either not on budget or had not been planned for in Rwanda.

For example, the Dutch governmentâ€™s withheld money was old funding, that had been off the books since 2009. This means, for the past several years, Rwanda government has not had that money on budget.

As for the UK, the decision to keep the budget funding, was reversed recently.

In commenting about the mix up over EU funding, Rwanda finance minister simply tweeted: â€œShame to the hatersâ€.